1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a heat exchanger assembly for an automotive vehicle which includes a heat exchanger core, a housing, and a seal formed therebetween.
2. Description of Related Art
Automotive heat exchanger assemblies generally include a heat exchanger core mounted within a housing. One such assembly is an evaporator assembly used in automotive air conditioning systems. In a typical automotive evaporator assembly, a warm air stream entering an inlet face of an evaporator core is cooled and dehumidified before exiting from an outlet face of the core. The cooled air stream is then passed into the passenger compartment of the vehicle. Any warm air that does not pass through the evaporator core, i.e., air that leaks around the core and passes into the passenger compartment untreated, decreases the efficiency of the system. Moreover, warm air that leaks around the core may produce undesirable condensation within the housing.
Various solutions to the problem of air leakage around heat exchanger cores have been proposed. These solutions generally comprise providing a preferred resilient gasket around the heat exchanger core in the space between the core and the housing. Preferred gaskets are subject to misalignment, however, and do not provide optimum sealing around the core, especially around areas of the core having uneven surface geometries, such as the fluid tanks. Moreover, due to variances in the size of the space between the core and housing, preferred gaskets may be undersized or oversized relative to o the space. Typical methods of manufacturing the heat exchanger assembly comprise securing the preferred gasket around the core and subsequently inserting the core into the housing. The housing must compress the gasket in order to provide a sealing effect.
"Form-in-place" processes are known in which a foam gasket is formed on a surface of an article prior to mating the article with another article surface. Forming such a gasket on the surface of a heat exchanger core prior to inserting the core into a housing would not solve many of the problems described above with respect to preformed gaskets, however. For example, the formed gasket could still be oversized or undersized relative to the space to be sealed. Moreover, the formed gasket would not generally conform in shape to the housing, and it would still be necessary for the housing to apply a compressive force on the gasket to provide a sealing effect.